022. Video Content Best Practices

Emilio Garcia from now Demand Generation Studio or Demand Gen Studio. I'm really happy to have another episode. We were called previously boundify Live and now we are changing the name to better reflect the audience and the kind of topics and conversations that we will have. We are geared toward mostly demand generation professionals, both the marketing and sales. So I think I'm quite happy with the change and to start this new stage on the on the series today we are going to talk about video content best practices. So really happy with it. If any of you is watching right now, share with me on the comments where you're watching from. It will be great to say hi and let us dive right away into the topic. So for today and let me put here the title for a little while for today we are going to talk about video, right? It's definitely not something that is new and it's been growing like constantly for the past few years and I think it's becoming definitely mainstream, right? As more and more people are doing it, just like myself and many other companies. So, so there are definitely best practices around it and I want to dive a little bit into them today. So the first one obviously will be why should your brand or company use video? Definitely the first one will be that is so, so much powerful, right? Because it can be engaging, it can be fun. You can, you can have a lot of fun, you know, being creative about it. Something that while you can do to some extent on text and images is not quite as powerful as video. So definitely that's the first one. The other reason is because it's multi sensorial, right? Is the same considering the fact of how text and images and even sound can be used to interact with people. Here you're combining a lot of the senses, right? Sound and sight. Sometimes you can layer up text. So there are many ways that you can convey your message that probably text or or even images or plain sound will not be able to do. Obviously the other reason is that video has always been a better option than other mediums. It's just that in the past it used to be hard to create video, it was hard to consume it, it was not easy to consume it on phones. So technology has catch up and more and more people feel comfortable consuming video. So it has increased in popularity, which definitely helps. So that's another reason you want to start using more video for. And the other reason that pretty much sum it up for the why is engagement. Video allows you to engage better with your audiences in both ways. They can see you and see that there's A human behind that conversation. And also you can interact with people in a better way, even in real time if you're doing live events like this one. So definitely many reasons why you want to start video. And I think nowadays there's no need to convince anyone that video is going to be something, is already something. There are very good stats that I would share at the end. So definitely a reason to start now before, you know, before the cameras start rolling, before you say, well, I'm convinced I want to do video right now. There's a few steps that you have to take before making that first clip, and I want to share with you some of them because just because it's fun, because it's interesting and engaging, it doesn't mean that you have to come up with whatever crazy idea and just roll over while you can do probably you will not see as much success out of that. So definitely you need to have some goal in mind. And the first thing is that for each and every one of them, you definitely should have a purpose. Right? So there are different kinds of videos that you can create. And in that sense, this is not different from the strategy that you put behind text efforts or, you know, sound or podcasting efforts is every episode needs to have a goal or every kind of video needs to have a goal or a purpose. And in this case, it can be just like the regular funnel. It can be to attract, meaning making your brand or making people aware of your brand, aware of the potential problems that your brand solves. So this might be obviously one kind of video or type of video that you can develop. There might be another set of videos where you are pretty much trying to engage to people that have been touched by the brand before and you want to make them familiar with your brand in some level. And obviously it doesn't mean that you only have to do video for new people. You can definitely build video for people that have never interacted with your brand, that have, sorry, interacted with your brand before. It can be actually opportunities, clients, so it can be more of retention efforts and to keep your brand top of mind to current clients. And you can have the three stages at the same time. Of course, what matters is for each one of your videos, you ask the question, what I want to accomplish? What will be the purpose of the videos that I have? Very related to that idea is the fact that once that you have decided on the. On the purpose, you need to keep your video focus, right? Very similar to what you do with a block piece. You don't want to say that you want to cover a specific subtopic or content and then go all over the place within your video, right? You keep. We want to keep it focused so search engines and users can identify it to a specific problem or kind of solution that you're providing. And the other thing that you need to consider is that video usually is part of a broader messaging effort or campaigns. So for example, the way that we do ours is that video is just the first stage in a serial false processes where we create this content and then break it down into more consumable pieces. And eventually I think even I'm going to recreate some of the conversation in a text form. So in this case we are using it more as a pillar for ourselves. But think about the other kinds of contents that you can create and they usually will support your message. If you, for example, want to create videos around testimonials, then the testimonial from the client on the video will be just the beginning because probably you will want to accompany that with some webpage that laid out the testimonial. You might even create a PDF or a little ebook to share with your prospects and a link to the video. So probably usually it's a supporting effort around the rest of your type of context or formats that you can create. So that will be, you know, things that you have to consider keep in mind before even starting. The other great area of opportunity is that you might have a purpose, but if you don't have the right set of analytics or metrics to track, and that usually goes along with the goal, then the other problem will be that yeah, you create videos with purpose, but then after you have created many, you will wonder should I do more of this? Should I try something else? And that's when you need to set up also before you start rolling some set of critic analytics so you can understand that better. So why? Well, again, primarily the main reason is because you want to understand what is working, what's not, and why. And that why goes for both reasons, right? Why something's not working so you can improve. And whatever is working, you want to understand why so you can do more and better of that, right? And the other reason you want to set up some analytics is because on top of that purpose you need a goal. For example, if you say something like I want to create a video that will help me to increase product sales, so that will give you the purpose. Probably you will do explainer on your product and the features, but at the same time you want to have some key metrics where you can measure the effectiveness of that video compared to another one that has the same purpose. For example, you can say something like, well, we will laid out in our video a call to action. So people can visit the product page and they can either request the demo or start a free trial or just purchase right away. And so you want to measure the effectiveness of, of that call to action. Or if you have some links on the description of the video that send people to different pages of your website, you want to track that too. So it doesn't have to be super complicated. And I always said that you have to take in general attribution metrics with a grain of salt because you can promote the wrong behaviors based on metrics that you set up on yourself. So you have to be careful with those. So it's not that if you create things that only work or you follow because of hardcore metrics, you also need to use a little bit of intuition. But definitely metrics help you to compare, to get a sense, to ask questions and to test ideas. So another ideas or another kind of metrics that you might be interested on tracking would be definitely video views, right? So something so, so, so basic and simple that definitely you need to track, as I said, you want to track the effectiveness of call to actions clicks on this link star spread or sprinkle across the description. In theory, video. If, especially if that's one of the metrics that is hard to attribute. But if you are doing a lot of video on a channel like YouTube and you are promoting your website, it should impact the site traffic, the traffic to the website, it should be impacted to some extent. You will get that social media referral Traffic coming from YouTube, but you will discover that there's going to be a lot of increase on your traffic that will come just, you know, from organic, even if you're not creating content in the more traditional way of blog posts. So it's going to be probably branded organic traffic that comes from your efforts from video. And that not only happens for video, it happens for other formats like podcasting. And that's also a lofty goal, right? If I want to increase the traffic of my website, and it's not necessarily related to the performance of the videos themselves, but the branding that is creating the awareness that is creating about the brand. And finally, another good idea because of the qualities of video is that you embed video on your website and, and that usually will lower your bounce rate, right? The bounce rate for pages that have video usually is lower because people spend more time interact with the page. So that will have an impact there. Another of the reasons or things that you might be looking to improve before you start is that to understand the fact that video, usually because it increase engagement on your website, then your website will have a higher probability of ranking better for the same keywords or the same topics that you were ranking before. It will give you that boost. Another reason it's important is not just to track the performance of your goals, but also to get insights. I believe, for example, that video is a great way to test topics and ideas that you eventually want to write about. Or another, another scenario that I have seen is that you break down a large piece of content and then you create smaller pieces and those smaller pieces when you share them on social, you will discover that some of those pieces will resonate better with your audience than others. And that might inspire you to create, you know, in depth videos for those particular topics or also just to create reading content about that. So it will guide your strategy. And those videos that didn't perform well, you shouldn't take them as failures. More of learning experiences that will let you know where should you focus, right? And also don't be afraid to try new things. Another great thing of having robust analytics on your videos is that you might try things are a little bit crazy, something that is, you know, out of the norm, out of the box. And you will see if that resonate with people. And if it doesn't, then you try something else. So all those things can be enabled, you know, tracking properly your videos. So the next, the next part or the next idea that I want to discuss with you today is obviously there's ton of information about how to create the videos, how do you edit and format them and probably I will dive into that idea in a later episode. Please comment if you're interested in that idea. That will be great to know. But finally is imagine that you have defined the purpose of your videos that you have already defined before your camera rolls, some of the goals that you will have and you have set up some analytics to make sure that you understand the impact. And now what are some of the best practices on the platforms that you want to share, distribute your content or distribute your video. So one common mistake is to treat each platform the same. And that's just relevant not just for video, it's just relevant for audio and for text and images, of course. So even when most social media platforms share to some extent a lot of features among themselves, that doesn't mean that you should do exactly the same on each of Them that even doesn't mean that you need to be on all of them at the same time because you still have to consider if your audience is there and if they are used to consuming video in that platform. In particular, there are some platforms where video is more common and where you know the interaction is better. So definitely you need to consider the platforms and their nuances when you are doing those efforts to distribute your content. I will talk about today about the four most known, not necessarily more popular. I think right now there is a platform that is quite popular like TikTok. You know, video is definitely something there. It's pretty much about video. However, for the ones that I will discuss today, three of them are mostly geared toward or can be used better for B2B. And I'm sure that on TikTok there's going to be some plays that are going to be developed for B2B on the. On the future, I'm sure. But I will cover this for today. So one general recommendation for all of them will be to add captions because and there's many statistics that support this. Most viewers or many viewers watch videos silently, right? And some platforms, even when they have autoplay, they usually mute the content at the beginning. So it's in your interest that even if the viewer cannot listen right away, if you catch their attention with the captions, then they can turn on the volume. Sometimes people simply doesn't because they are in a place where they cannot do it. So it's important to add captions to all your videos nowadays. Actually some platforms are creating those automatically and they're getting better and better at that. So I think in the future, eventually there will be no need or, you know, very, very few changes that you will have to do to those auto generated captions. But for the time being is usually better if you have them. And in most of the platforms. Now some specific recommendations for some of the platforms. For example Facebook, you have to think of Facebook as a share first platform in terms of video, right? Because usually we interact with friends and family. We want pieces that generate emotion, that drive emotion and ideally that tell stories. Also because Facebook target video in a way that considers what the user or the viewer has seen in the past, their interests, where are located. So all those factors are considered. You have to think about video in that way, right? The kind of person that will find it or not find it will you see it usually will be related to their interest. And again here you recommended definitely that you add captions and usually videos on Facebook when you upload It I'll upload them natively. They will start, they will start right away. And Facebook counts the three few seconds as a view. So if you want to start impacting those metrics, you have to do something that is, you know, grabs the attention quite fast so people can stay and then obviously give you that signal that someone showed interest. Now YouTube, which will be the other platform, pretty popular too. Of course, here the focus is on discovery. Many people doesn't realize, but the second largest search engine in the world is YouTube. It's not even, you know, it's not Microsoft, it's Google and then YouTube. And the only difference is that most of what people search obviously on YouTube is video, but it's a search engine. So your videos there should be geared toward discovery. And definitely you have to think in terms of SEO, right? And that will help you to be in front of the right people that will be looking for your content and discover it. Another great feature of YouTube that you have to think about is that before platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter created their own video content or hosting platforms, most of them will allow, or used to allow to run natively YouTube videos. So it's easy to share from there, it's easy to embed them on site. So think about people sharing your content in other places, maybe some other websites. And because of that, obviously take some time to put on understanding what kind of description should you use, the metadata, all of that will help with your SEO and make your video show up in the right places. Here, just like with Facebook, it's recommended that you start strong because you have a few seconds to capture a person's attention and then they might just go away. So consider a strong start explaining the purpose of the video and what they will learn and then doing the actual explanation. Now on Instagram, which is probably from, from all the four that I'm exploring today, the one that is far away from B2B. I'm not saying that you can't. I believe that some niches might find a way to make Instagram work for B2B. However, because of the nature of the platform itself is definitely harder than to B2C. And the reason, for example, is that the biggest recommendation on Instagram is that you need to seek to inspire, to drive way more emotion, right? And so that usually you can accomplish better when you are talking about health and attitudes and knowledge in general. And so sharing ideas is more inspirational in nature and aspirational too. And the other great. The other important thing to consider on Instagram is that there's higher quality of video production. And so even when that doesn't mean that you need to create a Hollywood level of video, definitely you need to keep things basically basic things like framing and lighting in mind so your video can stand out right above the noise. Another important thing here is that Instagram is heavy on hashtags, so you can just consider to use at least one. It helps a little bit with discoverability and with engagement for sure. And finally, on Twitter, I think that video for Twitter should reflect the fact that for text you go for the micro blogging or the short content that make Twitter a fast paced platform. So the same should be reflecting on your videos, right? They tend to be short, they tend to be more entertaining and focus on just one single idea because you don't have that much time. And you should consider that obviously rely too on stories and capturing meaningful sequence of events so you can increase engagement. Those are some of the ideas that I want to share with you, so to kind of like make a summary of them. It's important that obviously that you understand that video should be an important part of your marketing strategy that has become mainstream for many, many reasons. There are a lot of people watching video on mobile and engaging with video in way more meaningful ways than usually images and text. And before you start your camera rolling that you need to cover the basics on what is the purpose of my video, what are the goals that I want to accomplish, what are the metrics that I want to track, to understand what's working, what's not. And once you have set up those analytics, it's important that you pick the right social media platforms for distribution, the ones where your intended audience will be spending more time. That will be a great place to start and that you cater the format to what works best on each of the platforms, right? In terms of length, in terms of size and format, in terms of intent. So consider those recommendations for your video strategy. I hope you have much, much success with it and feel free to reach out either through the comments or just follow me on LinkedIn and if you have more questions, I'll be happy to answer them. I hope you enjoyed this video and find it useful and talk to you in a couple of weeks.